Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - Current-ish Ep2. Heatwaves, hosepipe bans, and a very hairy pizza

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Lucy Porter talks all things current-ish with Finlay Christie, Amy Annette and Christopher Macarthur-Boyd. Today - heatwaves, hosepipe bans, and a very hairy pizza.Hosted by Lucy Porter Written by Lucy Porter, Ruth Husko and Katie SayerProducer - Katie Sayer Assistant producer - Molly Punshon Executive producer - Victoria LloydA Mighty Bunny production for BBC Radio 4

Currentish. I'm Lucy Porter and this is Currentish. I'm here for the next two weeks to chat through the big news as well as highlighting some stories you might have missed because you heard the ice cream band pull up outside. In terms of my vibe, think Sarah Montague in a caftan sipping warm Prosecco out of a sports bottle.

I'm joined by a fabulous panel. Please welcome Christopher MacArthur Boyd, Finley Christie and Amy Annette. So my lovely panel, this week. The Odyssey is out in cinemas, as you must have noticed. Obviously, it's named after its hero Odysseus.

So if a genre or trend or anything really was going to be named after you, what would it be? Christopher, have you got some, what would the MacArthur Boyd or the Christopher? Oh, wow. What's the Christopher MacArthur Boyd? Yesterday I took a pizza out of the oven

and it landed face first on the ground. And I don't sweep my kitchen regularly. So it was a pretty hairy take on the salami pizza. I mean, we're all wondering, was the pizza eaten? Yeah. Yeah. I gave it a wipe. Waste not, want not.

Because there's the five second rule, but you're not getting a pizza up off a floor within five seconds, aren't you? Watch me. Finley, what would you embody as a concept? I'm having a Finley. I'm doing a Finley. I'm finley. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's in there having a...

Oh, he's been a while. He's in there having a Finlay, probably. He had a dodgy pizza, he ate off the floor. Yeah. I mean, maybe if there was an odyssey type situation, maybe like a kind of... Because as a teenager, I was really anxious and I had IBS. So maybe diarrhea of a wimpy kid, you know, and then...

Another question for you. Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, has kind of been cosplaying the Napoleonic Wars, essentially. So my question to you is, which era would you like to go back to? Well, I mean, this is pure aesthetics, but I wouldn't mind going back to a sort of John Le Carrey era, Cold War, you know, sort of going to cafes in Highgate, just put, you know, I'm wearing a trench coat, basically.

It feels like at that time, like spies were so chic. Everyone was wearing, and sure they were sad, and cheating on their wives, but they looked so cool. Is it just that you wish you? You could go to a climate where a trench coat felt like a good idea. It is not impossible that because of the current heat wave, I am just only imagining a cold and wet London. Get me to a squalid mansion block and with a Russian spy.

As long as it's damp, I'm happy. If there's a war, make it cold. Yes. That's what I want. But no, I think you would look gorgeous in a trench coat. Thank you. Not like a flasher, because that was always the thing. You would have to wear something underneath.

Not in this weather, I would not. But you can also wear a trench coat if you're. if you're going to a man's house to surprise him on his birthday. Yeah. Yeah. But it's always that way around, isn't it? Because no woman wants to be surprised. Finley, which ear do you think you would enjoy?

I'd love to have been around airports like pre-9-11. Yeah. See, I know. Yeah. I'd never got to experience that. So I was two. when it happened. So I imagine people walking through,

you know, lit cigar machete. I don't know. I don't know what was going on. But yeah, so I'd probably go back to September 11th, 2001. You know, I would know where I was. Because that's the thing, I was around, but that thing that Americans are like never forget,

I forgot it. I just wasn't fully conscious. So yeah. And I have, I will acknowledge, in that answer, I haven't said that I would stop it from happening. Well, I'll come back with you and I'll stop it from happening,

thus ruining your dream at the same time. How would you stop it, though? It's not a shooting baby Hitler situation, is it? It's a lot more complicated than that. Are you on the plane? Yeah, well, maybe I'm going further back and I'm becoming an instructor. I'm a flying instructor who's not very good at their job.

They didn't have to be good at their job to do what they do. I love that you gave them credit for being good pilots. Shall we crack on with the news? Now, the last fortnight has seen wildfires raging through France, Spain and parts of the UK, including the Cairngorms in Scotland and the Rinnigith in Wales. Obviously, I do apologise if you have any Welsh speakers in. I am not confident with my Welsh pronunciation, as I was saying the other day to my friend from Myclanfeier, poor, quingik, gilogogogogog.

The Environment Agency has officially declared a drought across over half of England, as the Met Office has confirmed there was so little rainfall this month, July was drier than Prince Andrew's armpits after a 10K... It just could have ended at Prince Andrew's armpits there, guys. This week's gardener's question time is just the sound of Cathy Clugston sitting silently in a deck chair, thoughtfully patting a dusty turnip. We've also seen devastating earthquakes in Japan, civilians being killed in Ukraine, and a continuation of the conflict in Iran.

Closer to home, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Phelp had a close encounter with the French Navy. He's best known for talking about stopping boats, so it must have been a confusing day when he became the boat that everyone wanted to be stopped. A journalist Michael Kean explains what happened. Strange moment in the channel just a few minutes ago, when we're interviewing the Shadow Home Secretary, right out here in the middle of the channel, when a French patrol ship went around 300 metres from our boat

and unloaded around 17 shots in close. proximity. The thing I love about this is that Chris Phelp really thinks that they were out to get him. He believes that the French Navy fired shots to try and intimidate him, which is a bit dramatic really, considering the traditional way to intimidate Chris Phelp is to simply invite him onto a live broadcast of question time. But Chris was a stoic figure standing on a boat under fire from the French, making him a latter-day Horatio Nelson, both men's career is nearly destroyed by a scandal involving a femme fatale, although in Chris's case that wasn't an affair with Lady Hamilton,

simply the shame of having appeared in Liz Truss's cabinet. But the wildfires raging in France, Spain, and even now some parts of the UK, exacerbated by climate change, have of course been at the forefront of our minds this week. French wildfires are now threatening the Bordeaux region, meaning that you should be very cautious if anyone offers you a great deal on some bottles of freshly mould claret. we can perhaps take some comfort

in the fact that climate change may be taken more seriously now that Bordeaux is suffering. I'm fairly sure that the Venn diagram of climate change deniers and red wine buffs has a pretty big intersection. I think there might be more chance

of meaningful action when people in this country with pink trousers, Panama hats and a casual disregard for modern science lose access to their holiday homes. With half of Europe on fire and flights being delayed, millions of Brits are facing a terrifying reality

that's far more sinister than climate change. We have to spend our summer holiday in the UK. The Met Office has already issued a severe disappointment warning for Bognoregis. I am kidding, of course. The UK has some beautiful holiday spots, but our cultural entertainment does lack flair. Spain gives you flamenco dancing,

Greece offers the bazooki and plate smashing. In Blackpool, you get a Michael Jackson impersonator from Burnley, moonwalking in a fleece because it's 12 degrees and drizzling. Christopher, will you tell us more about this boost to British tourism? Yeah, it's been huge, man. People are having to go on holiday in the UK.

There's been a big holiday park operator. Love at Park says summer bookings are up 35% while Waitrose says it is preparing for it expects to be the biggest daycation summer on record. Waitrose is. Waitrose, yeah. Supermarket, I think. I think it is.

You know better than me, brother. But there's no Waitrose hotels, are there? Not but for the picky bits. Oh, it's going to be like the most, the pickiest bits of alls ever. The people who usually eat olives here go away. Oh, yeah. So now, is it going to be domestic olive eating taking place?

Weight Trots. I always love the fact that it's, Waitrose essentials include tinned artichokes. Essential. Yeah. I can't go a deal without my tender jokes. I quite like the idea of like a resurgence in like English seaside towns. Because it used to be such a big thing, right? And then it became cheaper to go abroad.

Can you imagine like a time where I'm like we're all old and we're like, oh, there used to be this place called Las Vegas. It was like the Blackpool of America. So maybe we could get going down to Skegness. Skeggie Butlins. Have a little Skeggie done. Skegness is way. I done a gig in Skagnes last year

And sometimes if you do a wee gig You'll maybe Google the name of the town And then news So you can maybe make a wee reference To a local Uh Local news And there was a story in Skikness

A guy's body got discovered In his home by someone who was trying to burgle No Oh my God We are sponsored by Visit Britain Hmm Do that, like should we? I am not gloomy about British.

I love a British seaside holiday. So we used to go, when I was a kid, it was Pevensey Bay down on the South Coast, or we'd go to Filey in Yorkshire. And I loved them when I was a kid. But I do have a little... Now that I'm a grown-up with my own children, the idea...

Like, self-catering for a start, essentially I're just doing all the chores you normally have to do, except in a tiny tin box. Because in the day, we used to go to the holiday, Park and then my sister and I would just run off to

I mean basically there was no safeguarding in those days your parents would send you in the woods with anyone if they had a whistling and a clipboard basically see ma'am growing up working class you know I never got taken camping or anything but then there was a kind of aspirational social mobility

thing where she started going on foreign holidays and stuff but then as I've became more middle class as somebody who works in the arts I have went on camping holidays and I really don't get it. I think if you're working class, your life is already bad enough.

Let's rough it for a couple of days. If your life's class, you're like, yeah, it may be fun to not have plumbing. As someone who grew up very middle class, the idea of camping being like aspirational to you. Obviously our attempts to juzh up, the British holiday. and one of the things that I love

are the names for British seaside towns to make them sound more glamorous you may know some of these Torquille Torbados It's lovely isn't it Scarbedos as well for Scarborough And Bogneregis is

Bogbadoes Anything worse, isn't it? The Costa del Solent Par in Cornwall is the Parhamers and Falmouth is Falafornia. But my favourite one is Ponticarlo. Pontifractors never sounded so good, has it? Give me a little hands up, anyone in the audience

who lives in somewhere that people come to on holiday. Does anyone have a... Here we go. Whereabouts do you live, my lovely lady, in the front row? Very near Whitstable. Very near Wittstable. That is delightful, isn't it? The beaches, the seafood.

I don't know. Can we do a name... The sewage? It's the aspect of British holiday making that we sort of all try and sweep under the carpet. You just think everywhere you go now, there's just effluent being pumped. If the doorbell rings, I open the front door, and I think it's going to be someone from Thameswater

standing there with a little tupperware full of feces saying, can you pop these in your garden pond? It's ridiculous. But Wittsabell is a gorgeous little spot. Can we think of a more exciting? name for Wittstable. The problem is shittstable is easier, isn't it? Yeah, we're not, as British people, we're not used to making jokes where it makes it sound better. Someone says something about. Beer Wits.

Oh, beer wits! That is good. Round of applause for beer wits. That's so annoyingly good. Uh-huh. Isn't it fair? It's quite funny to hear somebody say, oh, I live next to the seaside and it smells like sewage, because I live next to a sewage treatment plant. And I'm always like, it smells like the coast. Some genuine articles from the BBC on this subject

include how to swap the Maldives for Northumberland. And within it, the actual advice is pack a big coat. So I'm sure that's what everyone remembers from their honeymoon in the Maldives, isn't it? It's just frostbite and angry Jordies. I would say a little tip for you, if you want to recreate the experience of a UK break in a delightful Airbnb cottage,

All you have to do is simply stay at home, throw away your stock of toilet paper, scatter a handful of dead wasps on your bedspread, and charge yourself 500 quid for breaking a wine glass. That's a true staycation. Okay, moving on. One of the main politics stories this week has been Zach Polanski, who faced fierce criticism for sharing a photo of a man wearing a t-shirt

featuring the XTC song title, Making Plans for Nigel, and a photo of a guillotine. It should be pointed out, that the likelihood of Zach Polanski actually killing anyone with a guillotine is fairly low. He is, after all, a failed hypnotist, not a failed magician. Elsewhere in politics,

Kemi Badenock has said that to solve the problem of prison overcrowding, people will have to accept that prisons would have to be built in their communities. With plenty of competition for limited places, prisons aren't really that different from schools. You'll start seeing it in state agents listings in no time. There aren't any good schools in the area,

but there's a very up-and-coming young offenders institution, so do get your kids' names down early. But obviously the main politics story this week has been Burnham's announcements on technical training and social care. Social care reform is a notoriously complicated issue that Prime Minister usually deal with by using a time-tested three-step strategy. One, promise to fix it.

Two, realise it's hard. And three, pretend to drop something on the floor and start talking about immigration. Andy Burnham has promised that his government will value the hard hat as much as the graduation cap from now on. If future policy announcements focus on a traffic cop's helmet and led the bikers cap and a Native American headdress, I think we'll have worked out where he's getting his ideas from. So, Finley, you've been looking into this. Give us the deets on the neat.

What hasn't he done, Byrne? And frankly, it's outrageous. I think we need a new PM. He's had a chance, but listen, no, I think, well, he needs some better fun facts, and then I'll listen to his policies, because every time he says, here's something you may not know about me, it's always something I know about him. It's never like, oh, I'm into feet. I'm actually Southern. I've been lying. Neats.

No, that was it. Neat's. I mean, I hate to bring you back to it, but... I must have something on that. There's a reason why young people aren't working. I say young people lack focus. but Finley's pretty much more than. Yes, you may know. There's over a million, isn't it?

Of young people not working. Let me tell you about NEETs. It's over a million, 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK were neither working nor learning in January to March this year, which, I mean, it is heartbreaking, although somebody does have to watch homes under the hammer. Don't worry, I got that covered. Do I think it's so clearly like there's less jobs?

Yeah, yeah. That's why people have them. Yeah, you cut straight to the heart of things, Christoph. Do you know what I mean? Like, I was in the airport, a Glasgow airport, a while ago, and there was a robot cleaning the carpet. It's a job. No, robots doing it.

All the jobs have been taken by robots. Burnham took a robot's job. The other thing that Burnham has been talking about this week, and I think, so he's been talking about social care. You just think with Andy Burnham, yes, he might prize the rings off your frail mother's fingers. But at least he'll look you in the eye and ask you if you're going anywhere nice on holiday this year. And you won't be. I think it is insightful to point out that whilst you're looking at the NHS, as he has said,

he thinks we should look at social care reform first, because the NHS has become the first place people go to for care in a way that it was not designed to be. I think it's definitely insightful. I think it was sad to see Kemi Badenock the way that she talked about it was saying that she was okay with the reforms as long as it was it also fair to those who had made provisions and had saved up over the course of their lives

which just seemed so short-sighted to me like if we have a good and strong social care network that's going to benefit everyone and if you have been one of the amazing people who have been saving for a good retirement instead of having a live-in nurse you can have something much more fun and frivolous right you're going to get a living nurse that's on Burnham

well you can have a living magician and you earn that He has been trying to give hope to people. Shall we hear a little clip? AI might be able to write an essay, draft a contract or make a slide deck, but it can't make a train. I mean, to be honest, Andy, look at what happened to HS2. Neither can we.

AI in his accent just sounds like a Yorkshire way of starting a sentence. AI, we can make board a train. So, now, let's move on. to a very different subject. Finally, there is bad news for those who thought that the end of the World Cup might mean an end to shirtless men in beer gardens. British man at the hint of a gap in the clouds

is a lovely shade from Farron Ball, if anyone is redecorating, and has a teenage daughter who loves fuchsia. Because the sport isn't over yet. We thought it was all over, it's not now. Amy, you've been looking at that, right? Yes, I have. Guys, did you know that the Commonwealth Games were on?

Right now. Okay, well, you love it. your sport. Because I feel like it was maybe, with so much love in my heart, not ideal timing to have the Commonwealth Games start seconds after the World Cup. And have it in Glasgow, the year that Scotland had qualified for the World Cup. It's a bit like the mayoral election right now in Manchester. Did you know there was a Manchester mayoral election going on? I just feel sorry people have spent so much time and energy training for the Commonwealth Games, which, as you know, is a competition without those pesky Americans, you know, which means people might actually be able to win a

You know, it's a good one. The Commonwealth Games, if you don't know, is where 74 nations and territories from across the Commonwealth, which is such a fun and modern way to say, empire. Is anyone following them? They sort of feel like they've been sort of overshadowed by the World Cup. And Infantino, who is the FIFA president this week, has continued the World Cup drama into this one, they had one week on their own, and we still got FIFA ruining it all. I don't know if you've seen this, the European UEFA, oh gosh, you know what?

I was doing so well. In my head, I was like, woman talking confidently about football. And then I was being too self-congratulatory, and I lost my train of thought. Here's the thing, okay? When you talk about FIFA, you start real confident, right? And then you start saying things like,

they want to give 20% of FIFA of the tournament out to private investors. And I can't be alone in thinking, didn't they already have them? This has been a social enterprise the whole time. This? So the World Cup, and what they want to do is have a thing called FFE, which is the FIFA Forward Enterprise, and Gianni Infantino, who doesn't want to just be famous for being the guy who turned over with that red card for the American team, he wants to give 20% of FFE

to private investors. But even literally seconds before the show started record, the European teams, UEFA said that they would boycott any World Cup if this went ahead, which huge for Russia. Qatar? America could finally win the thing. It would be very exciting for them. But we are in this situation where he's trying to really sell it. So he keeps saying he did an Instagram post.

I don't know if you saw it. It's always a good sign when you have to take to social media to explain why you're doing what you're doing. Very much like when my aunt took to social media to explain why she was seen with that man in that supermarket. And he said that it's just an opportunity, not an obligation. Oh, wow. I love it. That's very much like when my boss said,

we all had to go paintballing. It's an opportunity. not an obligation and then he shot me in the bum so much sport I mean it is so much sport Christopher is a proud Glasgow region

I yeah and a proud I mean there was a moment's hesitation what have you I mean for the rest of us if you were living anywhere southern just it was lovely seeing rain wasn't it

I mean I got the train to London today I was in Glasgow this morning I do think having a summer athletics tournament in Glasgow is kind of a sick joke. I've seen a lot of people in tracksuits with different countries on their chests walking just through puddles being like we could have been in Australia. Let's move on. We don't want to do just the big hitters. We are literally sweating the small stuff as well as sweating from every other possible place as well. So I've asked my panellists to bring with them a smaller story that caught their eye.

Amy, what have you brought for us? I want to talk about the Odyssey, the smash-hit film. It's really interesting because the responses to this adaptation of a fictional story have been quite revealing. I don't know if you saw that Elon Musk got very angry and said it wasn't historically accurate, which is a crazy thing to say about a fictional piece of work. But I kind of respect it, you know, because he's a professional troll, right?

He has all this money, what's he going to do with it? Be happy? No. He's particularly angry that Le Pizanjongo is playing Helen of Troy. You know, famously the most beautiful woman, the face launched a thousand ships, and she is not white, and his mind, that cannot be true, right? And it's so crazy because I did some research into the way in which the translations have occurred. And one of the reasons he's angry is that he believes that her whiteness is implied within the text.

But the ancient Greeks also said that the sky was bronze. These are really stupid ancient Greeks. Okay, so we should not be taking them seriously. I am very much looking forward to seeing The Odyssey, just because it's three hours long and in an air-conditioned cinema. to pop me earplugs in and just sleep for longer than I have him with. Can I just quickly do my girlfriend wanted me to do a joke about it? Yes.

Because they were annoyed that obviously Helen of Troy was cast and she's supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world so it should have been my girlfriend. Typical white woman. No, I'm doing it. No, my girlfriend's black. But moving on to Christopher, your story is... Oh, I, right, right.

Tokyo urges men to wear shorts to work. but women say it is leg hair harassment. And I took this to mean when I read that headline, oh, we're all wearing shorts, well, we're going to have to shave her legs. But that isn't at all. It's that they're upset that they're having to see men's hairy legs. Wild stuff, man.

I've been to Tokyo on holiday. You love Japan stuff, right? We just had dinner. We had sushi, yeah. Which is like a famous food in Japan. They have this thing called chicken katsu, which is fried chicken, but you feel like cultured while you eat it.

And it's got curry sauce on it, but they've made it into like a... You're like, yeah, you're cool for eating fried chicken with curry sauce. Yeah. Do you know what, chicken katsu curry? It's actually invented because Japan had an isolation policy for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Then I got broken up. And some of the first people to come in were British people who came through India and they brought in the curry sauce from there. But then also, because Japan had teamed up, well, teamed up's a strange word to put it, but they teamed up with Germany during World War II. Remember that team up?

And they brought in the chick... They collabed on Insta. And they brought in the chicken schnitzel. So it was a curry sauce from India, a chicken schnitzel and it was a restaurant called the Swiss Bar in Tokyo. That's the history of the Chinese Bar. And what is the neat?

We'll simply never know. So, Finley, very quickly, let's hear your story because it is a fascinating bathtub influencer. Influencers who took a bathtub up a mountain and left it there. Sorry for honest mistake. Is that quick enough? Yeah, that's great. There was an influencer

who took a bathtub he took a bar tub up a mountain and he left it there. and he's sorry for his honest mistake. And, listen, we've all done it. It's one of the easiest things to get down a mountain as well. Just kick off the legs and slide down. Have they not seen Last of the Summer Wine?

The legacy is lost. Well, on that bombshell, that's everything you need to know to stay current-ish this week. Thanks to our excellent panel and our sensational studio audience and to you listening at home. Goodbye. Currentish was hosted by Lucy Porter with guest comics Finley Christie, Christopher MacArthur Boyd and Amy Annette. It was written by Lucy Porter, Ruth Husko and Katie Sayer, with additional material by Molly Punchin and Mike Shepard. The producer was Katie Sayer and it was a mighty bunny production for BBC Radio 4.

Hi, I'm Phil Wang and this is a podcast to podcast trailer for a different podcast than this podcast that you've listened to or are going to listen to. But nonetheless, I'm talking about another podcast that you should also do. definitely listen to. The podcast I'm talking about is Comedy of the Week, which takes choice episodes from BBC sitcoms, sketch shows, podcasts, and panel shows, including my own show, unspeakable, and puts them all into one podcast. Maybe I'll trail this podcast on that podcast. Who's to say? I'll do what I like. Listen to Comedy of the Week now on BBC Sounds. Podcast.